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[Trensicourt]

I know there are missions relating to cargo but I think transporting people is just as common in other games. Do people not want to migrate to other planets? There are plenty of descriptions that imply people are moving around from planet to planet and I'm sure there is profit to be made from such a service.

[RogueVector]

Yeah, that's just a cargo hauling mission but with a 'Passenger' item type and needing passenger space instead of cargo.

I'd be down for those.

[Plantissue]

I think the general presumption is that anybody rich and powerful enough to hire a fleet to transport them would be able to make arrangements with their planet/faction themselves and anybody poor, would probably have a scheduled civilian transport. In real life there is no direct analogue of space games idea of a non-luxury long range independent passenger transport. The super rich don't just flag down a random passing tramp freighter jet, there are private airports with contracted business jets already catering for their needs. Military personnel don't hire random passing vehicles, they already have their own significantly large fleet of logistical vehicles for that purpose.

That said I don't mind. It would be nice to see passenger transport fleets, though really you would expect to see single passenger ships be convoyed onto a fleet that is transfering itself to another system. Question is what happens if you fail the mission. It'll liven up the missions to have bar missions where you pick up passengers. Perhaps you have to get there as quickly as possible on burn 20 to get the full amount of money. Perhaps you transverse jump in and into a meteor shower. Your position is correct but the destination ain't there. There is a small moon nearby...

[DatonKallandor]

Eh, if a large group of people want transport between countries in a cold war state, I could see there not being regular scheduled transport availible. Especially in the sector where pirates and pathers are everywhere and between-system travel is very dangerous.

And of course, colonists might want transport to new colonies. Helping an existing faction make a new colony (or a growth-nerfed Waystation) might actually be a cool mid/late-game mission type to make the sector more dynamic.

[bobucles]

I do like the idea of factions giving missions to assist them with building a colony. Moving a bunch of colonists (not necessarily crew) would make good use of passenger transports. It not only gives the player a greater variety of missions to play, but it also lets them play a more active role in developing the sector and choosing sides.

[David]

.... See, the problem with bulk passengers as cargo is that 1. they probably want to go somewhere in particular, 2. dumping them out the airlock - or otherwise failing to sustain the capacity to transport them while in deep space - is can get rather grim. 3. Also a huge amount of mechanical complexity is introduced because its implicit that they'd have to use crew capacity rather than cargo, and there's a whole different set of rules/UI/UX around crew capacity vs. cargo holds. Dumb cargo has neither of those problems.

To solve these issues requires either more than one leap of conceptual abstraction or a LOT of extra work. And in any event: you can kinda treat crew like a commodity right now. (And: Honestly, if I were to do reasonably small passenger transport missions, I'd probably just abstract the whole thing entirely and not engage with the cargo/crew capacity. Kinda like how right now officers don't use the crew capacity system.)

(... Not to say that speculation about how to solve this isn't potentially fascinating, so do carry on! Just laying out why it wasn't an obvious feature to have.)

[BringerofBabies]

Having specific destinations can be handled by having bulk passengers only as actual missions, from the bar and whatnot. Failed bar missions already have a penalty, so that could just be increased for failed passenger missions (because you presumably dumped them out the airlock or on some random planet).

That would leave just the UI around crew capacity, which would require some amount of extra work. A little while back in a thread about experienced crew, I suggested having different crew commodities having different values for pay & crew (work) provided - that would allow for experienced crew that get paid more but require fewer individual members, and passengers that provide no work but also don't get paid. This would require some changes to UI/UX, but I think they should be fairly minimal, relatively speaking. You'd also have to change how crew is lost during fights to try to avoid your passengers getting killed in battles where their transport isn't actually at risk, which would be a more involved change for UX (assuming it can't be done completely under the hood).

[DatonKallandor]

^^Edit: the fact that marines exist as non-working, crew capacity consuming, pay receiving commodities already solves all those problems doesn't it?

Yeah I wouldn't even have a separate "passenger" commodity that uses crew capacity or anything (although a non-crew commodity that uses crew capacity instead of cargo already exists: Marines, so the code base for a dedicated "passenger" commodity is there) - just make it work like cargo missions, in that you get (or are asked to provide) x number of crew and deliver them to y destination. If you fail, you get penalized just like with every other mission. There wouldn't be non-mission passenger interactions at all (no "shortages" or "excess", pure mission based).

[Dread Lord Murubarda]

what if you also get money according to the quality of the journey.
fights = less quality
0 fights = safety bonus
destination reached before (max days to complete)/3 = quickness bonus
using dedicated passenger ships = comfy bonus
using a deluxe passenger ship = luxury bonus + comfy

I think this should not be an end game activity, unless you can automate it, like setting up a fleet from your own ships to do it, even being able to give it your officers, and they wouldn't count as officers in fleet.

just another early up to mid game option to mess around with. rich people could ask to visit the fringes. so you'd have to have a yacht for the luxury bonus, it would be worthwhile to avoid fighting and moving fast.

you could also intercept other factions' transports and ransom them.

[Eji1700]

.... See, the problem with bulk passengers as cargo is that 1. they probably want to go somewhere in particular, 2. dumping them out the airlock - or otherwise failing to sustain the capacity to transport them while in deep space - is can get rather grim. 3. Also a huge amount of mechanical complexity is introduced because its implicit that they'd have to use crew capacity rather than cargo, and there's a whole different set of rules/UI/UX around crew capacity vs. cargo holds. Dumb cargo has neither of those problems.

To solve these issues requires either more than one leap of conceptual abstraction or a LOT of extra work. And in any event: you can kinda treat crew like a commodity right now. (And: Honestly, if I were to do reasonably small passenger transport missions, I'd probably just abstract the whole thing entirely and not engage with the cargo/crew capacity. Kinda like how right now officers don't use the crew capacity system.)

(... Not to say that speculation about how to solve this isn't potentially fascinating, so do carry on! Just laying out why it wasn't an obvious feature to have.)

Would a reasonable compromise be just adding crew/marines to commodity missions?  "X planet needs more pilots/troops" or whatever?

[Innominandum]

...To solve these issues requires either more than one leap of conceptual abstraction or a LOT of extra work. And in any event: you can kinda treat crew like a commodity right now. (And: Honestly, if I were to do reasonably small passenger transport missions, I'd probably just abstract the whole thing entirely and not engage with the cargo/crew capacity. Kinda like how right now officers don't use the crew capacity system.)
(... Not to say that speculation about how to solve this isn't potentially fascinating, so do carry on! Just laying out why it wasn't an obvious feature to have.)

what if you also get money according to the quality of the journey.
fights = less quality
0 fights = safety bonus
destination reached before (max days to complete)/3 = quickness bonus
using dedicated passenger ships = comfy bonus
using a deluxe passenger ship = luxury bonus + comfy

Passenger Missions or how to make ferrying live Cargo like Argnus to your Cahoona bakery a meaningful experience, indeed a conundrum. If we can't reach 1000 LoC ... nevermind, kinda pointless without an easy to use stellaris-like event handler/interface.

I do like the idea of factions giving missions to assist them with building a colony. Moving a bunch of colonists (not necessarily crew) would make good use of passenger transports. It not only gives the player a greater variety of missions to play, but it also lets them play a more active role in developing the sector and choosing sides.

:thumbsup:

[Sutopia]

I guess programming-wise it's kinda hard to keep track and save the object state? Since humans are "unique", it would require unique object constructed every time you pick such mission and the object needs to get tracked. It's either gonna blow up the save file for careless player who jets people here and there, or be not-realistic as every batch of passengers are not actually unique.

[Zavek]

what if the passengers are transported in sleeper caskets?
you stick them into your cargo and bam they dont interfere with your crew.

but honestly spacetravel for *civilians* would be hard to explain. it not like they get on hypernet and order a ticket from Jangala to Corvus for a 2 week tourist trap vacation.